Many geostationary orbit satellites are closely positioned, for example, at intervals of about two degrees, and currently operated. Accordingly, it takes a long time to track a target satellite or tracking accuracy is decreased due to signal interference between satellites.
In a conventional multi-satellite reception antenna (including fixed and automatic positioning antennas), multiple LNBs track satellites and receive signals. In addition, the current position of the antenna is calculated using GPS signals and skew angles of the LNBs are changed based on the current position. Here, when the antenna is not arranged in the horizontal direction, a value for initial satellite tracking has an error corresponding to a tilting degree of the antenna since tracking is performed using GPS signal information.
In addition, a conventional tracking algorithm using GPS values simply employs a sequential tracking method and needs to synchronize an antenna and GPS signals, and thus initial satellite tracking takes 10 minutes or longer.
FIG. 1 illustrates installation of a conventional multi-satellite reception antenna.
Referring to FIG. 1, an antenna 10 is equipped with multiple LNBs 20 for receiving satellite signals from a plurality of satellites. The multiple LNBs 20 track satellites and receive satellite broadcast signals, simultaneously. Since the multiple LNBs of the conventional multi-satellite reception antenna execute both the function of tracking satellites and the function of receiving satellite broadcast signals, satellite tracking time increases and an error caused by tilting of the antenna is generated, as described above.